Andrea, I don't have a great, direct answer for you. My opinion and experience is that VHS tapes hold up better than you'd expect and that movie DVDs borrowed from our public library often are "shmutzy" and cause skips, jerks, hangs, and jumping back to the beginning while being played. I am active in a Jewish Historical Society which maintains an Archives and a Judaica Library. We have a small cabinet of VHS tapes which are not currently cataloged and which are being discussed as to whether we should catalog and lend them and/or whether any should be copied to DVD. I also have the organization's VHS/DVD Recorder for the purpose of copying local interviews on VHS, many going back to the early 80s, to DVDs. To me the VHS interviews are pretty good quality, whereas the DVD copies that I have done so far are possibly of lesser quality -- either due to "losing something" in the copying or a poor quality DVD recorder. Another issue is that I believe DVD standards and protocols are in flux and perhaps today's DVDs will have to be eventually copied to a newer DVD format. Of course fewer new titles are being recorded in VHS tape format so new acquisitions are more likely to be DVD. I would love to hear from other experts about my comments.
Bernie Levy IT Specialist, Jewish Historical Society of Lower Fairfield County The Harry Rosenbaum JHS Judaica Library Stamford, CT (USA) Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
